News:Alexander Rhatushnyak is also
the thirdWinner! Congratulations!
... the contest continues ...

Being able to compress well is closely
related to intelligence as explained below.
While intelligence is a slippery concept,
file sizes are hard numbers.
Wikipedia is an extensive snapshot of Human Knowledge.
If you can compress the first 100MB of Wikipedia better
than your predecessors, your (de)compressor likely has to be smart(er).
The intention of this prize is to encourage development
of intelligent compressors/programs as a path to AGI.

This compression contest is motivated by the fact that
being able to compress well is closely
related to acting intelligently, thus reducing
the slippery concept of intelligence to hard file size numbers.
In order to compress data, one has to find regularities in them,
which is intrinsically difficult (many researchers live from
analyzing data and finding compact models).
So compressors beating the current "dumb" compressors need to be
smart(er). Since the prize
wants to stimulate developing "universally" smart compressors,
we need a "universal" corpus of data.
Arguably the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia
is a good snapshot of the Human World Knowledge.
So the ultimate compressor of it should "understand"
all human knowledge, i.e. be really smart.
enwik8 is a hopefully representative 100MB extract from Wikipedia.

We would like to increase the prize with the help of donations.
Currently we can only accept pledges of over 1000€, i.e.
the donor obliges himself to pay up to the pledged amount to one or
more winners in the future.
In return, the donor will be appreciated by placing his name
besides the winner in the table of records, unless he wants to
remain anonymous.
If you consider becoming a sponsor for
(or have questions or suggestions regarding) our the prize,
please contact one of the committee members above for
more information or
fill out and return the pledge form
(PDF / ASCII).
Please regard this as a suggestion only. We are open to
other forms, and in particular establishing a real fund.

So far we have received the submissions below. Each is/was
open for public comment and verification for 30 days before an award decision
will be/was made. Comments should be made to the
Hutter Prize Newsgroup
or by email to members of the
Prize committee.

The time for decompression/compression is estimated for a 2GHz P4.
The percent (%) improvement is over the baseline (previous record) L=17'073'018 and L=18'324'887 respectively
More details on the (de)compressors can be found
here.

Sep'07-...: Alexander Rhatushnyak submits another series of ever improving compressors.
Is there nobody else who can keep up with him?

Nov'06-May'07:
Alexander Rhatushnyak
submits another improved series of (de)compressors paq8hp6-12
(option -7). On 14.May 2007 he submits paq8hp12
It achieved an improvement of 3.5% over the new baseline paq8hp5 and was finally confirmed as the second winner on 30.June 2007.
Congratulations! A detailed description of paq8hp12 can be found here.
Most of the time in developing paqhp6-12 went into planning and
performing experiments, and studying and understanding the results
of these experiments.
Alexander Rhatushnyak's current occupation is in software
engineering. For him data compression is science and art and sport
all together. This was his motivation for participating in the
contest.
Dr. Rhatushnyak was born in the Siberian Scientific Center
(www.nsc.ru), studied data compression and related algorithms since 1991,
and graduated from the Moscow State University (www.msu.ru) in 1996.
After his PhD in 2002 he lived and worked in various places in the world.

Aug-Sep'06:
Alexander Rhatushnyak
of the Moscow State University Compression Project
submits an improving series of (de)compressors paq8hp?
(option -7), modifications of paq8h with a custom dictionary built from enwik8
and other improvements. Przemyslaw Skibinski contributed to earlier versions.
On 25.Sep.2006 Alexander Rhatushnyak submits paq8hp5.
It achieved an improvement of 6.8% over the baseline paq8f
and was finally confirmed as the first winner on 25.Oct.2006. Congratulations!
A detailed description of paq8hp5 can
be found here.

Warning: The average quality of the posts
in the discussion groups and mailing lists is very low.
Most participants don't know the underlying scientific concepts
and some have not even read the
rationale
behind the contest. For a cleaned summary consult the
frequently asked questions.
The competition was also announced or discussed in many blogs.

Disclaimer: Copying and distribution of this page
(http://prize.hutter1.net)
is permitted, provided the source is cited.
The prize will be paid if the solution reflects the spirit of the contest.
In particular decompressors (secretely) receiving any kind of "outside" information are
forbidden. Also in order to verify your claim we need to be able to run your executable on
our machines within reasonable space and time constraints.
Payment of the prize cannot be legally enforced. The smallest claimable prize is 1500€.
After an award, the prize formula (L) will be adapted.
Rules may change at any time to meet the goals of fairness, accuracy,
maximizing public participation, and recognizing existing practice. July 2006.